I've always scratched my head over
this aspect of many scientists (and believers in scientism) today: as we learn,
we begin with the Laws of Thermodynamics, but eventually reach a point of
sophistication that requires us to abandon them. Does this make any sense at
all? (Of course one does not abandon the Laws of Thermodynamics willy-nilly; one
must come up with some sufficiently convoluted explanation as to why it only
_appears_ that the Laws of Thermodynamics are being violated.)

But,
to be blunt, they HAVE been abandoned. Any fool knows that a smart phone is
created by intelligent action. Any fool ought to know that galaxies, solar
systems, planets, and life itself can only be the result of intelligent action,
as they are many orders of magnitude more complex and beautiful than any smart
phone could ever hope to be. Go figure.

“This is an exceedingly strange development,” wrote the late NASA
astronomer Robert Jastrow, “unexpected by all but the theologians. They
have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven
and earth ... (But) for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of
reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of
ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; (and) as he pulls himself
over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been
sitting there for centuries.”Another excellent article Dr. Peterson.
Thank you!

With the dearth of information on what all is out there, the
'friendliness' of the universe will for now have to remain as relative
as Einstein labeled time and space. We've only scratched the surface in
human knowledge of that from which we sprang, guided or unattended.

“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of
physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems
as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”-Freeman Dyson______________________________

That sounds
almost like a prayer.

I trust that God will indulge us in a hubris or
two down here in what might be an obscure out of the way outpost of creation.
The Creator must have billions of magnificent projects going on across the vast
reaches of the cosmos. How consequential we are in the big picture is a question
of proportions for us sleepy passengers on this tiny little ball we call home.

"I'm not surprised, therefore, that essentially the same story is
repeated, beyond Genesis, in the books of Moses and Abraham in the Pearl of
Great Price..."

Precisely what essentially "same story"
can one find, aside from in the LDS Book of Abraham, that our Sun is a planet
and "borrows its light from Kolob" and also receives its power from two
other stars, which in turn receive their light from Kolob?

I'm
curious as to where that can be found? Of course, modern science agrees that our
Sun gets its light and power from an internal process called thermonuclear
fusion, not from an outside source such as from another star.

There is a very logical theory that has much credibility among many Christian
scientists that God created the heaven and the earth 12.7 +/- 0.5 billion years
ago per Genesis 1:1-2 and Isaiah 45;18, but completely "renewed the face of
the earth" slightly over 6000 years ago per Psalm 104:30, the vast
intervening period allowing for the rebellion in heaven and the dinosaur
periods.

If you want to read an interesting analysis of religion and science written by a
devote Mormon who has quietly worked behind the scenes as one of the leading
nuclear physicists of our time you can look on Amazon for the book Religion and
Science in the Last Days.

The Westminster Shorter
Catechism: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him
forever.” Sanctification is making us into people who glorify God and
imitate Him in all things.

How we might glorify God. Genesis,
1:26–27,all human beings are made in God’s image. This may be hard
to conceptualize, for God does not have a physical body like we do, and He also
lacks our limitations as created beings.

Nevertheless, like our
Creator, we are rational beings who are able to communicate in words. We possess
minds, wills, and hearts, all of which are analogous to God’s own inner
life,unlike Him our knowledge is finite and we are not laws unto ourselves.

We bring the Lord the most glory when we reflect His character. His
goodness, love and holiness. Our ability to do this is hampered by sin, but our
Savior, by His Spirit, restores our ability to reflect God’s image truly
over the course of our lives (2 Cor. 3:18).

Christians will reflect
the divine image to the fullest extent, glorifying Him forever in the new heaven
and earth (Rev. 21).

@PopsThe laws of thermodynamics have never been violated in any verified
experiment. They are still obeyed even when an intelligence is involved. The
production of your smart phone did not violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Likewise, no laws of thermodynamics are violated if sunlight shining on a
primordial soup causes some chemicals to reproduce themselves, and eventually
something is formed that we call life.

The idea that life developing
from a primordial soup violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics is an error in
the understanding of thermodynamics that is propagated by creationists. No such
violation is required.

Tyler, you don't understand what the Strong Anthropic Principle means. The
characteristics of the universe are determined by both a combination of certain
laws with certain initial conditions, involving things like mass, electric
charge, and the strength of various forces. It turns out that the laws of
physics do NOT dictate the numbers, and scientists have no idea what determines
the numbers. BUT they have figured out that if any of those dozen or so numbers
was different by a small amount (in some cases 10%, in others by less than 1%),
then the universe would be so different that LIFE could not exist. Somehow, all
the important numbers, which appear to be arbitrary as far asphysics is
concerned, have been set at precise values that are all essential to LIFE coming
into existence and being sustained long enough for mankind to have evolved. The
chance of all these numbers having the right values by accident is incredibly
small. When a forensic scientist finds facts that are highly unlikely to occur
by chance, he suspects that the facts were created intentionally. That kind of
deduction is the essence of the investigative science we see in the CSI TV
shows.

The ancients told stories to communicate truths, not history. For me, the
creation story in Genesis is not history.

Also, according to the
latest science, an infinite number of universes are being created and destroyed
all the time. Some of these universes have the right physics laws that life
like we have is possible; laws which are fine tuned enough to permit us to
exist. I don't know how God is involved in this, but I believe He is.

The more we learn, the more we learn the less we know. We have gone
from a geocentric universe to heliocentric, then to a universe composed of a
galaxy to one of many galaxies, and now we are to the point of we exist in a
universe within an infinite number of universes and most of this change came
within the last 100 years. What will we know in another 100 years.

The Universe isn't friendly to life. Investigate the fate of the Earth.
Life will die out.Of course if you believe the myth that the Earth will
become smooth as glass like the U & T then there is no discussion.

@Church Member: you didn't have to make the leap to God as the intelligent
force of creation. Richard Dawkins is apparently more comfortable with
"extraterrestrials" as the answer. I'm not going to pretend to know
the answers to your questions, because I don't.

@Skeptical
Chymist - thanks for trying to provide one of the "sophisticated"
explanations I mentioned in my comment, although all you did was make an
assertion backed by argumentum ad hominem. I suppose what you meant to say was
that in the long run the Second Law wins. The problem with that explanation is
that by observation the Second Law also wins in the short run - the very short
run. Maybe you assume the sunlight in the soup and theoretical result of
intelligent life is the evidence supporting your position, but then that would
make your argument rather circular.